Auld Lang Syne
by Jade4813
Summary: The simple truth is, they need each other. A perspective on how Barry and Iris went from strangers to family to a potential for something more, told over the course of three Christmases. Submission for Westallen 2014 Gift Exchange on Tumblr.


**A/N: **My contribution to the 2014 Westallen Gift Exchange on Tumblr. Challenge prompt: Joe/Iris/Barry family moment/s: Iris and Barry as kids or as teens, shared best-friendy moments, warm/humorous family moments, etc.

**Auld Lang Syne**

_1997_

It was snowing when he first saw her.

Barry was sitting on the playground grass after the final bell, trying to catch his breath after yet another beating from the school bully, when he heard a soft rustle of fabric and looked to his left to see her sitting there. In her bright red coat, shiny patent leather shoes, and wide black ribbon holding a mass of riotous curls back from her face, she looked like she'd stepped out of the pages of a fairytale. But when she shifted to cross her legs, he saw dark smudges in the knees of her white tights – a hint that, perhaps, the girl in front of him was prone to getting into a bit more mischief than her otherwise pristine appearance might suggest.

She didn't seem to mind the frozen ground beneath her as she met his silent regard with wide, dark eyes, framed by the longest lashes he'd ever seen. Finally, she asked in a soft voice, "Are you okay?"

He lifted one hand to his nose to check for blood. Miraculously, it came away clean, so he nodded. "I guess so," he mumbled, feeling embarrassed.

She offered him a tentative smile. "My name's Iris. Iris West." He noticed she was missing a front tooth, which made her lisp just a bit.

"I'm Barry Allen," he mumbled. Realizing how he must look after his recent encounter, he flushed and started gathering his scattered books and papers.

She seemed unfazed by his lack of reaction, because she added in a chipper voice, "This is my first day."

"I know," he murmured, shooting a quick look around the playground. He was halfway convinced she was somehow setting him up for some sort of prank, but nobody seemed to be paying them any attention. Turning his attention back to her, he asked, "I'm not trying to be mean, but…why are you talking to me?" She was pretty, sweet, and outgoing, so there was no reason he could imagine for why she'd want to talk to the geekiest kid in school.

As her lips curved into a slight smile, she cocked her head to the side and regarded him silently. "I thought we could be friends." He didn't know what to say to that, and when his lack of response turned out to be too much for her patience, she added, "Don't you want to be my friend?"

"No," he retorted flatly, but he felt bad when he saw the hurt behind her eyes at his blunt response. Barry sighed. "You shouldn't even be talking to me," he pointed out, rubbing his cheek where he'd been punched. "I'm a geek. If they see you talking to me, they'll think you're a geek and beat you up, too."

She made a soft, noncommittal sound and reached out to stop one of Barry's papers from blowing away. "Well," she said simply, "then I guess we'll have to be best friends. Nobody will mess with us if we're best friends."

"That…doesn't make any sense," he pointed out, a little sheepishly, though he felt a smile twitch at the corners of his mouth.

She saw his reaction and threw him a wide grin in return. "Sure it does!" she countered. "Anyway, did you draw these?" She was holding a slightly soggy piece of paper with doodles of cats shooting lasers from their eyes, and he gave a bashful nod. "They're good!"

"You think so?" he asked, trying to wipe some of the snow off the paper before shoving it into a notebook. "Thanks, I –" Before he could continue, he caught sight his mom, waving to him from across the lawn. Not wanting her to realize he'd been in a fight, he scrambled to his feet. "Oh, my mom's here; I've gotta go." For the first time, he found himself actually wishing he could stick around school a little longer.

Iris followed his gaze over her shoulder. "Oh. Is that her? She's pretty," she remarked, her voice a little sad, as she jumped to her feet and brushed herself off.

Barry nodded. "Where's your mom? I bet she's pretty, too, if she looks like you."

He flushed at his inadvertent complement, but Iris didn't seem to notice. She was scuffing the frozen ground with the toe of one shiny shoe. "It's just me and my dad, and he works a lot. He's probably not off yet, but someone'll come get me and I'll hang out at his work a while before we can head home. I used to have ballet after school, but not anymore. Dad says we have to encomomize."

He frowned. "What's that mean?"

Her little lips pursed and her eyes narrowed as she considered the question. Finally, she gave up and shrugged. "I'm not sure. But it's pretty boring."

"Well, if your dad doesn't mind, you should just come to my house to play when he has to work from now on!" Barry offered. "I'm sure my mom and dad won't mind."

He didn't want to keep his mom waiting, so he and Iris murmured their goodbyes, and he started to jog away. After a couple steps, he stopped and turned back to her. "Oh…and I lied earlier. I really do want to be your friend."

Her answering smile was brilliant and he could swear her eyes sparkled when she corrected him, "My _best_ friend. See you tomorrow, Barry Allen."

That was the moment that he started to fall in love with her.

He ran to his parents, his injuries completely forgotten. As he left, he shot a glance over his shoulder at the little girl in the bright red coat, standing by the seesaws. There were probably thirty other kids on the playground, but she might have been alone, for all that he noticed anyone else. Their eyes met, and he thought he caught her throwing his family a wistful smile. In that moment, he realized that she seemed a little lonely, standing alone, watching his family leave. Maybe she needed a friend just as much as he did.

* * *

><p><em>2000<em>

His sobs were loud enough to be heard in the hallway. She paused and then slowly pushed open the door. When she poked her head inside, she saw him sitting up on his bed, his back against the wall as he tucked his face into the knees pressed tight against his chest. After a moment's hesitation, she closed the door softly behind her and crossed the room to sit at his side.

Iris didn't say a word as she scooted onto the bed next to him. She threw her arm around him and, when he didn't pull away, rested her cheek on his shoulder, silently offering him comfort. He didn't look her way, but eventually, his sobs started to subside.

When he finally lifted his head from his knees, his cheeks were still streaked with tears and blotchy from the force of his crying. She could tell he was embarrassed, because he wouldn't meet her eyes as he wiped his face on his sleeve.

He was quiet, and Iris couldn't stand the painful silence between them, so she offered, "It's snowing. You wanna go have a snowball fight?"

He shook his head. "No, that's okay." He paused and then asked tentatively, "Is Joe mad?" She shook her head in return but then, realizing she wasn't entirely sure of the answer and not wanting to lie to him, she shrugged. Barry sighed. "He thinks I'm crazy." With this, he scowled and threw his pillow across the room in a small gesture of rebellion and anger.

"He doesn't think you're crazy," she countered in a soft voice. There was no need to ask him to elaborate; she'd heard Barry's reaction to discovering her dad was taking him to see a therapist in a couple of weeks. "He thinks you saw something terrible and anyone would have a hard time dealing with that. He's worried about you, Bear."

His lower lip jutting out a little, he countered, "He's not worried about me. He thinks I'm crazy. You probably think I'm crazy, too. Ow!" His pout transformed to an incredulous glare in her direction as he rubbed the spot she'd just punched on his arm. "What was that for?"

"For being an idiot," she replied in a level voice. "You're my _best friend_, Barry. Of course I believe you! You've never lied to me before, and I don't think you're about to start now. If you saw yellow lightning in your house that night, then…then you saw yellow lightning," she finished simply, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug.

His eyes narrowed, he threw her an assessing look, as though trying to decide if she was telling the truth. "Honest?"

She rolled her eyes at him, but the little smile touching the corners of her mouth softened the gesture. "Come on, silly. I have something to show you." Grabbing his hand, she pulled him to his feet and propelled him towards the door.

Iris dragged him to her room, barely slowing down when his foot caught on the doorjamb, causing him to stumble. When he caught his balance, she stepped aside and brandished one arm towards a lopsided "tent" made from blankets that she'd erected in the corner. "Ta daaa!" she announced cheerily.

Barry looked askance at her handiwork. "Um…it's great!" he said with forced enthusiasm.

Iris snorted, unimpressed by his attempt to mollify her. "And _that's_ how I know you've never lied to me. You're a terrible liar. Now come on. What I want to show you is inside."

He dutifully scrambled through the sagging entryway after her, and she waited until he got settled before reaching under a blanket and pulling out a large, flat box. It had been hastily wrapped, with paper askew and the use of far too much tape. But she beamed proudly at him as she handed it over. "Merry Christmas!"

"Christmas isn't until next week," he pointed out with a chuckle as he grabbed his present.

"Duh. I know that! And Dad helped me pick out something for you to open on Christmas morning, but I thought you needed to see this now. Dad doesn't know about it." Her eyes flickered to the present in his hands and she lifted her weight onto her knees a little bit with a tiny hop of excitement. "Now open it! I wrapped it myself," she pointed out, as though there could have been any doubt.

Barry failed to bite back his smile as he tore into his present with unrestrained glee, tossing the wrapping paper aside. When he opened the lid of the box, he found a plain brown book inside, and his face fell just a fraction. "Oh. Thanks," he said when he opened the book to reveal its empty pages.

Iris's eyebrows rose expectantly, and she nodded towards the book in his hands. "Go on. Flip through it."

With a tiny frown of confusion, Barry fanned through the pages until a scrap of white caught his eye, about ten sheets from the front binding. He paused and pulled back the pages, turning them slowly to see what Iris had pasted there.

There were a series of news printings that Iris had carefully cut out and pasted inside the book. There was a story about unexplained crop circles found in a farmer's field in Idaho, a series of strange lights spotted in the skies over Norway, and strange boulders that had inexplicably been found high in the branches of a grove of trees in Indiana.

"Well?" she finally prompted, growing impatient with his perusal. "What do you think?"

"Um," he began, then paused and flipped through a couple more pages. "What…?" He stopped again and threw her a confused glance.

Tilting her head to the side, she tried to get a good look at the book Barry still held. "Okay, so I couldn't find the best articles," she admitted. "But I had to do it at the library and I don't think the librarian understood what I was going for. But don't you see? They're all impossible! They're impossible stories!" She met his eye and threw him a shy smile. "I just…I know that everyone thinks what you saw was impossible, but…so is all of this," she explained in a halting voice. "And no matter what happens, I wanted you to remember that. I wanted to give you this so you could look at it when you need to and remember that impossible things do happen. And I left plenty of extra pages so you can add to it, whenever you find a story about something impossible. So you never forget."

She stammered to a halt and stared gravely at him, sucking her lower lip between her teeth, an unconscious betrayal of her nervousness. "Oh, god, what was I thinking? This is stupid. You hate it!" she blurted, reaching desperately for the book.

Barry dropped it in his lap and grabbed her hands. "No, I don't!" he protested. "It's…it's perfect, Iris. Thank you."

Her smile, tremulous at first, grew a bit more confident. "Turn to the first page." He flipped to the front cover, where she'd pasted a photo from her birthday the year before – in happier times, before the tragedy that had torn his family apart. Joe had taken them to a local family-themed pizza place, where they'd worn silly party hats, eaten too much pizza, and played carnival games for cheesy prizes. Before leaving, they'd asked a waiter to take a picture of them – Barry, Iris, and Joe, and they'd all pulled a funny face right when the photo was snapped. At the bottom of the photo, in red pen, Iris had written "The West-Allen Family" in large, loopy letters.

"I know we can't make up for what happened to your mom and dad," she murmured softly, "but that's to remind you that we'll always be your family."

He stared at the picture in silence for a long minute, and when he looked up at her again, his eyes glistened with unshed tears. "It's perfect," he said in a choked voice. With a soft sniffle, he turned his head away and made an attempt to lighten the mood. "But shouldn't that be Allen-West?"

She wrinkled her nose at the suggestion. "Nah. West-Allen definitely sounds better." Without warning, she launched herself across the tent and threw her arms around his neck in a tight hug. "Merry Christmas, Bear."

"Iris? Barry?" She jumped at her father's voice, just outside the tent.

Grabbing the book from Barry, she tucked it into its box and shoved it back under the blanket. "Yes, Dad?" she called out.

He cleared his throat and offered, "I just made some hot cocoa. You guys want some?"

"Sure!" She scrambled out of the tent, Barry close on her heels.

The two boys exchanged a glance, and Iris could tell that her friend was feeling bad about some of the things he had said a short time ago to the man who had taken him in. "Hey, Joe?" he started tentatively. "I was thinking Iris and I could go build a snowman. You want to help?" Iris rolled her eyes. Barry was horrible at apologies.

Her dad smiled down at them, his shoulders relaxing a little. "Of course! Why don't you go drink your cocoa and then we'll put on our coats and head outside."

Barry nodded. As Joe turned to leave, he threw Iris a conspiratorial smile and darted through the door first, eager to get to the hot chocolate before it cooled. Iris giggled and raced after him, determined to get there first, before he could hoard all the marshmallows.

She never told him that, of all the incredible, so-called impossible things in the world, he – with his warm heart and sweet smile – would always be her favorite.

* * *

><p><em>2014<em>

It was her first Christmas without him. Well, if one didn't count the Christmas he'd spent in a coma, which Iris didn't – both because that hadn't been intentional on his part and because she had actually seen him that day, even if he hadn't been awake to see her.

This was the first Christmas since they'd become friends that she didn't see him for at least a few minutes. His absence was like a physical ache inside of her that all the bourbon-spiked eggnog in the world couldn't drown out.

Of course, she knew why he wasn't there. He'd been more or less avoiding her, ever since hitting her with that bombshell.

He was in love with her.

He'd loved her for years.

He'd been _in love_ with her for years, and she hadn't known – hadn't even suspected his feelings. All of those late night talks that they'd had, all the times she'd reassured him that he would fall head over heels for some lucky girl some day, he'd been in love with her and she hadn't had a clue. How many times had she inadvertently hurt him in her obliviousness? She couldn't even imagine. Almost certainly every time she'd kissed Eddie in front of him.

Not that she could really blame herself, because it wasn't like Barry had ever said anything to her about his feelings. But that still didn't stop the ache inside that hit every time she thought about all the times over the years that she'd probably caused him pain. And, worse, that she'd probably done so a million times and never even suspected it once. How could she call herself his best friend when she'd been so oblivious to something that had clearly been eating him up inside for a while?

Iris settled back on the couch and glowered at the tree. Normally she loved Christmas. It was her favorite time of year. But not this year. This year, she missed Barry. She could feel the gap that was growing between them, and she hated it, but she didn't know what to do about it.

If only she could go back in time, to the way things were before his confession. Except that would mean that, while she would be perfectly happy, he'd still be miserable and trying to hide it, and she couldn't bear the thought of that.

But how had she never realized? Not even once? How had she not even suspected?

The questions ran around in circles in her mind, driving her quietly mad.

Neither her dad nor Eddie knew the reason for her uncharacteristic melancholy attitude that year. She hadn't told them about Barry's confession. What would she possibly say? When her dad had asked her earlier that day if she'd heard from Barry, she'd quickly changed the subject. He'd stared at her thoughtfully over the rim of his coffee mug, but he thankfully hadn't pushed the issue.

For probably the fiftieth time that day, Iris picked up her phone and stared at Barry's name in her contact list. Her thumb trembled as it hovered over the button to complete the call, but she didn't press it. If Barry hadn't contacted her, it was probably because he needed some space after his confession. Maybe calling him would just re-open that wound.

But she missed him.

The first soft strains of _Blue Christmas_ filtered through her dad's stereo speakers, and she threw a fulsome glare towards the offending object. Great. Even electronics mocked her for her inaction.

Wondering when she'd become such a coward, Iris swiped her screen to switch it to text mode and stared at the blinking cursor as she debated what to type. As the last refrain in the Christmas song faded away, she sighed. The song was, what, five minutes? Five minutes of staring at her phone, wondering if she should text her best friend. This was getting to be ridiculous.

Finally, biting the inside of her cheek anxiously, she typed the message and hit 'send' before she could have second thoughts. Two seconds passed, and she watched as the text changed from grey to green – confirmation that the text had gone through. Doubt grew in her mind as she stared at the three little words on the screen, wondering if she'd done the right thing.

_Merry Christmas, Bear_

She was pretty sure such an innocuous message shouldn't be causing her such torment, but she was back to wondering if, in missing him as she did, she'd selfishly violated his need for space.

A faded ellipses appeared on the bottom of her screen, her phone's signal that Barry had read her text and was typing a response. She caught her breath and stared at those three little dots, willing them to mean everything was okay between the two of them – that his years of silence and her obliviousness hadn't irreparably harmed the relationship she'd probably held the most dear in her life.

One minute passed. Two. The ellipses faded, but no message came through. Heart feeling like it was tearing in two, Iris tossed her phone aside – a moment too soon, it seemed, as it chirped to indicate an incoming text almost the second it hit the table. Iris almost fell out of her chair in a mad scramble to grab it.

_Merry Christmas_

It seemed she hadn't been the only one to struggle over the best message to send, since she was pretty sure that should have taken him two minutes to write. She wanted to text back that she missed him. She wanted to apologize for having hurt him. She couldn't do either.

Still, while she was certain that there were a hundred things that needed to be said between them, even that small contact with him made her feel a little better. She was debating what if anything to write back when her phone chirped again.

_You have a good day?_

Sucking her lips between her teeth, she hesitated for just a moment before writing back.

_Wasn't the same without you._

She wasn't sure it had been the right thing to say, but it had been honest. She would hate to think that was something the two of them could no longer be with each other.

Another long moment passed before his response came through.

_Sorry I couldn't be there._

Couldn't be here because he'd had other things to do? Or couldn't be here because he couldn't stand to be around her at the moment, now that the truth hung in the air between them? She didn't know, and there was no way she was going to ask.

She pursed her lips and weighed her possible responses. Finally deciding on one, she sent it to him before she could change her mind.

_You'll come by when you can?_

Ellipses appeared, disappeared, and appeared again.

_Any time you want me to. You can't get rid of me that easily._

Possibly for the first time that day, Iris smiled. Maybe it would take a little while, but she was starting to believe that her relationship with him would eventually get back to normal.

And maybe one day, she'd even find the nerve to think about why she'd felt the smallest twinge of disappointment at the thought of their relationship going back to what it had been.


End file.
